The Return of the Kings and Queens

The Kings and Queens of Narnia, that is!

The long awaited sequel to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is finally here!

Journey back to Narnia with Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. Meet new friends- Caspian the 10th, Reepicheep the Mouse, and more! But beware Lord Miraz and his minions! And where has Aslan been?

Watch The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian to find out. Now playing in theatres near you.

Links about Prince Caspian:

- Official Prince Caspian Movie Website
- Narniaweb
- Narniafans
- Prince Caspian at our library
- Fandango: Check out movie schedules and buy tickets online.

Cross-posted from the Teen Blog.

Tampa's own Anime Nation!

One of my favorite places online is Animenation.

Animenation contains a retail store, anime forums, anime news, and an anime rental service called Rent Anime.

So why am I writing about Animenation here? Because the company's website now includes two Library 2.0 features:

- a news blog
- a podcast

While Animenation has had a news page since I have been a member (and I joined back in 2001), it converted the news page to a blog format recently- allowing comments as well. And the podcast has been present for a while as well.

I do not know if web message boards would be considered part of Library 2.0, but I do use them quite often.

Lolcats

Or should I say lolmice?

Created at Big Huge Labs.

Image Generators

One of my favorites would be the Church Sign Generator.

Here's the one I created:

This website even has a list of thought-provoking and amusing real church signs!

The girl is back in town

I have not been blogging recently. Why? Because last week I was on vacation. Yeppers, my friend and I took a cruise to Mexico and Belize.

Since this week's lesson is about photo sharing and mashups, I'll share some pics from my adventure.

Hasta la vista!

Top 50 Children's Books

Here is the list:

Top 50 Children's Books

Needless to say, I am ecstatic that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe came up first place!!! Although my favorite installment of The Chronicles of Narnia would be Book III: The Horse and His Boy.

Plus Matilda came up in 13th place. Roald Dahl is my favorite author- and several of his books got on the list, which is fantastic.

Other favorites that made the list include: Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales.

Did I tell you that I have read The Little Prince in three languages- Spanish, then English, and then French. If I find it in German, I will read it as well.

You are never too old to enjoy these classic books.

Two birds with one stone

I was purposely delaying the RSS Feeds and Online Personalization lessons. Why? Because I had absolutely no experience with them.

However, earlier this week I stumbled upon iGoogle while at ERI. And I saw just how simple it was to pick and choose the content you wanted. Not to mention how many fun and informative tools there were. Among the features I chose were- Phase of the Moon, Weather, and How of the Day. I even have a couple search tools- Dictionary and Wikipedia.

Plus I also have two different news providers in my iGoogle page- Top Stories and CNN.com. But those are not the only feeds I have on my page.

Before reading the Library 2.0 blog, I did not even know about RSS feeds. But Google Reader provided an easy way to subscribe to your favorite blogs. First was our system's own Teen Blog- which I write for often. Various people had mentioned Annoyed Librarian- and since I am always curious about what's going on in the library world, I decided to add it. Finally I also added a blog from one of my fandoms- The Fifth Turtle.

I did not think it would be so simple and quick to personalize my own Google and subscribe through an RSS feed- let alone so much fun.

Saturday program

This upcoming Saturday the 23rd of February, I will be conducting a Bilingual Storytime program right here at John F. Germany. This month's edition of Stories y Cuentos is titled "The World/El Mundo" and will feature stories about places and locations all over our beautiful planet. Learn the words for river, mountain, world, sea, and more! Plus you'll get to create a 3D island map that you can see and touch.

So this Saturday the 23rd at 2 PM join me for Stories y Cuentos! Bring your children, nieces and nephews, neighbors, young cousins, and their friends too!

Blog Readability Level

Movie Reviews

Courtesy of Cheryl's Moxie Librarian blog.

Favorite books for kids and teens

Favorite Toddler Time book: Polar bear, polar bear, what do you hear? by Bill Martin and Eric Carle.

Favorite Story Time book (also works well for FLYP): Punk Farm by Jarrett Krosoczka.

Favorite story to tell aloud: The Bremen Town Musicians by the Brothers Grimm.

Favorite picture book fairy tale: The Twelve Dancing Princesses retold by Marianna Mayer and illustrated by K.Y. Craft.

Favorite juvenile book: Matilda by Roald Dahl.

Favorite older juvenile/young adult books: The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.

Favorite manga: Magic Knight Rayearth by CLAMP.

Reviews and tags

I know I have posted reviews of items or movies before. I often review anime and manga for anime message boards such as AnimeNation. Didn't remember whether I had reviewed anything for Amazon before, so I did just now. And of course, it was for one of my two favorite manga in the whole wide world- Magic Knight Rayearth. It even gave me the option of tagging- which I had done in the Teen Blog and for my pics in Facebook, but never in a review.

Games, games, games!

I remember my first video game console. It was an Atari 2600. My father brought it home when I was 8 years old and in the third grade. One of the three games he brought that day was E.T. I tried playing it and then tried some more- but felt VERY guilty that I could not beat it unless it was in the easy mode that did not have the scientist or FBI agent. Many years later I would read on the internet that E.T. was a very hard and flawed game.

I have only had two more consoles after that- a Nintendo Entertainment System and a Playstation 2. My favorite genre would be Role Playing Games, aka RPGs. Believe it or not, my favorite installment in the Zelda series is Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. It is one of my two favorite video games, along with Final Fantasy VI.

From playing PacMan at the Pizza Hut Arcade when I was in elementary school, to DDR at MOSI during my library school years, to swinging by one of the libraries on my day off just so that I could play some Guitar Hero, I think gaming can be even more fun when you are with friends. Other video games that can be played with a group include: Taiko Drum, Donkey Konga, and Rock Band. I even remember a keyboard simulation one that I played at an anime convention- which often feature tournament games like Soul Calibur or Super Smash Brothers Melee.

And of course, you can always find puzzle games like Tetris online. I think those never go out of style.

I edit Wikipedia...

Bonus points if you recognize what song does this post title's come from.

Anyhow, the other day I found out that there is a Wiki for The Legend of Zelda. Yeppers, I have played four Zelda games- although not the most recent one for the Wii. I have even cosplayed Princess Zelda from Ocarina of Time:

But this is not about cosplay or video games- although they can certainly be a part of Web 2.0. This is about wikis. And photo sharing. And social networking. And podcasting.

Although I have not written a Wikipedia article from scratch, I have edited quite a few articles. I have corrected erroneous information, as well as added more examples. I even added various terms to the article comparing which terms were used for various concepts in different Spanish speaking countries. I have seen other wikis- Muppet, Zelda, Takarazuka, and even parody ones that are not so nice.

I store my photographs in my personal webspace. It can be tricky after a while remembering the URL for pics, though- or which ones I have uploaded. So I can see how useful photo sharing sites can be. My cousin uses Kodak photo sharing to send me pictures of her daughters.

Social networking sites can be quite useful. Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with elementary and secondary school classmates that I had not seen or even heard of since graduation. MySpace has allowed me to connect with people from online classes, as well as people from my college organizations. They do have drawbacks- but as adults, one needs to know what to post and when to access it.

I have not created a podcast yet- though my friend's father did make one for a class he teachers. The only podcasts I have listened to are the ones from NarniaWeb and AnimeNation.

Here's a music video I found in YouTube featuring my favorite song from when I was a toddler. And of course, it is about a little girl who had a pet mouse!

Instant Messaging and Blogging

I had used various forms of instant messaging before Ask A Librarian. I have had ICQ (remember it?), AIM, and MSN. I have even had a few AIM handles. I will admit that I am very rarely on AIM nowadays.

Virtual Reference can be fun. I have learned quite a bit, and it is very easy to use. I have not used it as a customer yet.

My first try at blogging was back in early 2002. Back when Blogger did not even have the Comments capacity embedded. I had a simple blog- but I switched to LiveJournal after a few months because I wanted to be able to read all my friends' blogs easily. I recommend Blogger as a more formal blog for your workplace- very easy to access. I am even part of the Teen Blog team and have written a few articles. Most of them involve recommendations for the month, but I also write about anime conventions, pets, and current movies. Overall, I enjoy blogging- great way to keep people updated.

Avatars

Here is the doll I made at Elouai:

And the best avatar of all is 3D- my Just Like You American Girl Doll:

Welcome to Heidi's World!

Hi everyone! This is my very first post in this particular blog. I have posted in other blogs before- hey, I even made a post in our library's Teen Blog today. I have a MySpace page, and a Facebook page, and a YouTube account with music videos created by yours truly. And I do participate in many many message boards- about anime and manga, or my favorite hobbies, or for organizations I belong to- and have created avatars for them using Paint Shop Pro. I even keep a blog at LiveJournal.com where I post on a regular basis.

Does that mean that I was not amazed by Library 2.0? On the contrary- I am quite perplexed about all the marvelous features.

I have only gone through "About Library 2.0" and the first training module so far. But for now, I will show you one of my LiveJournal avatars:



Yeppers, I sewed the plooshies all by myself.


And here is a picture of Violet, my beautiful blue mouse:




I will keep you all updated on my Library 2.0 progress. Have a nice day!